Decorative jackets for recorded music media were attached to the walls of rooms and sales areas for decorative purposes during the early years of the so-called long-play (LP) records. So long as these jackets were made of paper or cardboard, they could either be nailed directly to the wall or attached with staples. But these options are not available with the standardized plastic cassettes used for compact disks.
Recently, U-shaped rails are frequently attached to walls to permit the arrangement and display of compact discs in plastic cassettes. But these have several disadvantages. First of all, they do not permit individual cassettes to be taken out of the holders at random, it being necessary rather to remove the neighboring cassettes first, should the desired cassette not happen to be the one in front. The achievable display image of several CD cassettes also leaves much to be desired. Furthermore, the displayed cassettes cannot be opened without first removing them from the holder.
Available on the market are various types of arrangements for the storage of CD cassettes. These all take the form of so-called CD boxes or CD towers. In the case of both boxes and towers, the CD cassettes are inserted from between side bars. The CD cassettes are nearly horizontal when stored. To be able to use a CD, it is always necessary to pull the entire CD cassette out of the box or tower. Only then can the cassette be opened and the CD removed for playing. The CD cassettes stored in these racks are difficult to identify, because only the small lettering on the end of the CD cassette can be read. The frequent removal and handling of the CD cassettes easily leads to damage, making it necessary to replace them.